Basingame would surely have come back as soon as Montoya told him about the quarantine unless he had been stopped by bad weather or impassable roads. Or Montoya might not have told him about the quarantine. Obsessed as she was with the dig, she might merely have told him she needed his signature.
Ms. Taylor, her four healthy bellringers and Finch were in his rooms, standing in a circle and bending their knees. Finch was holding a paper in one hand and counting under his breath. "I was just going over to the ward to assign nurses," he said sheepishly. "Here's William's report." He handed it to Dunworthy and scurried out.
Ms. Taylor and her foursome gathered up their handbell cases. "Mr. Andrews called," Ms. Taylor said. "He said to tell you a battering ram won't work, and you'll have to go in through Brasenose's console."
"Thank you," Dunworthy said.
She went out, her four bellringers in a line behind her.
He rang the dig. No answer. He rang Montoya's flat, her office at Brasenose, the dig again. There was no answer at any of them. He phoned her flat again and let it ring while he looked at William's report. Badri had spent all day Saturday and the morning Sunday working at the dig. William must have been in contact with Montoya to find that out.
He wondered suddenly about the dig itself. It was out in the country from Witney, on a National Trust farm. Perhaps it had ducks, or chickens, or pigs, or all three. And Badri had spent an entire day and a half working there, digging in the mud, a perfect chance to come in contact with a reservoir.
Colin came in, soaked to the skin. "They ran out of placards," he said, rummaging through his duffel. "London's sending some more tomorrow." He unearthed his gobstopper and popped it, lint and all, into his mouth. "Do you know who's standing on your staircase?' he asked. He flung himself onto the window seat and opened his Middle Ages book. "William and some girl. Kissing and talking all lovey-dovey. I could scarcely get past."
Dunworthy opened the door. William disengaged himself reluctantly from a small blonde in a Burberry and came in.
"Do you know where Ms. Montoya is?" Dunworthy asked.
"No. The NHS said she's out at the dig, but she's not answering the phone. She's probably out in the churchyard or somewhere on the farm and can't hear it. I thought of using a screamer, but then I remembered this girl who's reading archaeohistory and…" He nodded toward the small blonde. "She told me she saw the assignment sheets out at the dig, and Badri was signed up for Saturday and Sunday."
"A screamer? What's that?"
"You hook it to the line and it magnifies the ring on the other end. If the person's out in the garden or in the shower or something."
"Can you put one on this phone?"
"They're a bit too complicated for me. I know a student who might be able to rig it, though. I've got her number in my rooms." He left, holding hands with the blonde.
"You know, if Ms. Montoya is at the dig, I could get you through the perimeter," Colin said. He took his gobstopper out and examined it. "It'd be easy. There are lots of places that aren't watched. The guards don't like to stand out in the rain."
"I have no intention of breaking quarantine," he said. "We are trying to stop this epidemic, not spread it."
"That's how the plague was spread during the Black Death," Colin said, taking the gobstopper out and examining it. It was a sickly yellow. "They kept trying to run away from it, but they just took it along with them."
William stuck his head in the door. "She says it'd take two days to set it up, but she's got one on her phone if you want to use that."
Colin grabbed for his jacket. "Can I go?"
"No," Dunworthy said. "And get out of those wet clothes. I don't want you catching the flu." He went down the stairs with William.
"She's a student at Shrewsbury," William said, heading off through the rain.
Colin caught up with them halfway across the quad. "I can't catch it. I had my enhancement," he said. "They didn't have quarantines, so it went everywhere." He pulled his muffler out of his jacket pocket. "Botley Road's a good place to sneak through the perimeter. There's a pub on the corner by the blockade, and the guard nips in now and again for something to keep warm."
"Fasten your jacket," Dunworthy said.
The girl turned out to be Polly Wilson. She told Dunworthy she had been working on an optical traitor that could break into the net's computer, but hadn't managed it yet. Dunworthy phoned the dig, but there was no answer.
"Let it ring," Polly said. "She may have a long trek to get to it. The screamer's got a range of half a kilometer."
He let it ring for ten minutes, put the receiver down, waited five minutes, tried again and let it ring a quarter of an hour before admitting defeat. Polly was looking longingly at William, and Colin was shivering in his wet jacket. Dunworthy took him home and put him to bed.
"Or I could sneak through the perimeter and tell her to phone you," Colin said, putting his gobstopper back in the duffel. "If you're worried about being too old to go. I'm very good at getting through perimeters."
Dunworthy waited till William returned the next morning and then went back to Shrewsbury and tried again, but to no avail. "I'll set it to ring at half-hour intervals," Polly said, walking him to the gate. "You wouldn't know if William has any other girlfriends, would you?"
"No," Dunworthy said.
The sound of bells clanged out suddenly from the direction of Christ Church, pealing loudly through the rain. "Has someone switched that horrid carillon on again?" Polly asked, leaning out to listen.
"No," he said. "It's the Americans." He cocked his head in the direction of the sound, trying to determine whether Ms. Taylor had settled for Stedmans, but he could hear six bells, the ancient bells of Osney: Douce and Gabriel and Marie, one after the other, Clement and Hautclerc and Taylor. "And Finch."
They sounded remarkably good, not at all like the digital carillon, not at all like "O Christ Who Interfaces with the World." They rang out clearly and brightly, and Dunworthy could almost see the bellringers in their circle in the belfry, bending their knees and raising their arms, Finch referring to his list of numbers.
"Every man must stick to his bell without interruption," Ms. Taylor had said. He had had nothing but interruptions, but he felt oddly cheered nonetheless. She had not been able to get her bellringers to Norwich for Christmas Eve, but she had stuck to her bells, and they rang out deafeningly, deliriously overhead, like a celebration, a victory. Like Christmas morning. He would find Montoya. And Basingame. Or a tech who wasn't afraid of the quarantine. He would find Kivrin.
The telephone was ringing when he got back to Balliol. He galloped up the stairs, hoping it was Polly. It was Montoya.
"Dunworthy?" she said. "Hi. It's Lupe Montoya. What's going on?"
"Where are you?" he demanded.
"At the dig," she said, but that was already apparent. She was standing in front of the ruined nave of the church in the half-excavated medieaval churchyard. He could see why she had been so anxious to get back to her dig. There was as much as a foot of water in places. She had draped a motley assortment of tarps and plastene sheets over the excavation, but rain was dripping in at a dozen places, and where the sagging coverings met, spilling down the edges in veritable waterfalls. Everything, the gravestones, the battery lights she had clipped to the tarps, the shovels stacked against the wall, was covered in mud.
Montoya was covered in mud, too. She was wearing her terrorist jacket and thigh-high fisherman's waders like Basingame, wherever he was, might be wearing, and they were wet and filthy. The hand she was holding the telephone with was caked with dried mud.